The series ended on a Gerald Perry RBI single off of Tom Neidenfuer (man never count on this guy in the postseason) to complete the sweep and crown the 1988 Baltimore Orioles as the Worst Team of My Lifetime. Congratulations guys!

After dropping their first six games of the postseason the '88 Orioles made a spirited comeback but all it meant was that they forced their fans to see another home game. Eddie Murray may be in the Hall of Fame but he takes Least Valuable Player honors in this series he scrapes together only 2 hits in 25 at bats.

The Cubs once again can't even win the big one as they eliminate themselves from the Loser League setting an all 1988 match-up to crown the worst team of my lifetime. After hitting .480 against the Padres in the previous round, Ron Gant takes the LVP by hitting .115 and committing three errors which reminds you why he was moved to the outfield.

That Game 1 score is not a misprint as this series reminds you why Baltimore lost 21 games to start the 1988 season. Baltimore's team ERA for the series was 14.40 as the A's hit .374 as a team. No word yet if Cal Ripken will request to pull himself out of the line up for the next series.

Do you believe in miracles, eh? The '79 Blue Jays were the only team to top 100 losses in the Loser League and were the runaway favorite to take the title entering the postseason but they shock the world but beating the '82 Twins. The Jays mounted a five run 8th inning comeback in the deciding Game 4 to send the Twins to the Loser Championship Series and many of their players to suicide.

Cubs' fans this might be your year! No team was happier that two months of the 1981 season was wiped out by a player's strike than the Cubs and it almost seems cruel to make them keep playing. I don't know if Bartman stole a foul ball from Steve Henderson in the deciding game.

Go Braves! After dropping two at home the Padres make a remarkable comeback and in Game 5 defeated the Braves in an 18 inning classic or really 6 hours and 26 minutes of torture if you had watch these two teams play. The game ended on an Ozzie Smith RBI single off rookie Tom Glavine who was forced into the game as a pinch hitter and remained in the game to pitch after the Braves bench and bullpen had been used up. Here's the boxscore:

A-Pinch Hit For Lemke In 8th InningB-Pinch Ran For Blauser In 8th InningC-Pinch Hit For Mahler In 8th InningD-Pinch Hit For Runge In 8th InningE-Subbed Defensively (2B) For Smith In 8th InningF-Pinch Hit For Jimenez In 9th InningG-Pinch Hit For Lollar In 11th InningH-Pinch Hit For Alvarez In 12th InningI-Pinch Hit For Lucas In 13th InningJ-Pinch Hit For Bass In 13th InningK-Subbed Defensively (1B) For Perkins In 15th InningL-Pinch Hit For Assenmacher In 15th InningM-Pinch Hit For Bonilla In 15th InningN-Pinch Hit For Curtis In 15th InningO-Pinch Hit For Sutter In 17th InningP-Pinch Hit For Mura In 17th Inning

Ohhhhhhh what a finish! Okay not really as all races were decided before the last day of the season. But we did have a surprise as the '03 Tigers, losers of 119 games, will not advance to the postseason as they were beat out by the '88 Orioles for the Loser Card. All the division races went to those who have been "leading" most of the year. Here are your A.L. playoff match-ups.

'88 Orioles vs. '79 A's'79 Blue Jays vs. '82 Twins

And let's recognize those who were the best of the Loser League on the A.L. side.

The '81 Cubs reversed the curse of the goat! Most of the season it was the '91 Astros and '85 Pirates fighting over the bottom of the N.L. Central but the Cubs blew past them with a clutch September record of 4-21 and ending the season on a 13 game losing streak! Truly remarkable. No surprises in the other races as the '98 Marlins did eventually pass up the '88 Braves for the league's worst record but as expected the Loser Card comes out of the East. Here are your N.L. playoff match-ups.

With a month left in the season the '79 Blue Jays have an outside chance of losing more games in the Loser League than they did back in 1979. That would truly be an astonishing feat of futility. We finally had a "lead" change in the West as the '80 Mariners eeked by the '79 A's by one game setting up what should be a thrilling finish. The '03 Tigers still cling to the Loser Card by two games over the '88 Orioles.

We have a three dead horse race in the N.L. Central as the '91 Astros pulled ahead of the '85 Pirates but a half game with the '81 Cubs making a late season charge, sitting three games back. Surprising development in the East as the '88 Braves and '98 Marlins haven't complete sucked ass in the last couple of months where there's now a chance the Loser Card might not come out of the division. Could this be a major choke job? And in the West the '93 Rockies are chipping away at the '81 Padres lead, now within three games going into the final month.

Now granted the '88 Braves have scraped together some wins lately but they still are the Braves and they are featured in our boxscore of the month for August. They were drubbed by that juggernaut that was the '08 Nationals 18-2 on August 29th as the Nats banged out 24 hits.

Not a whole lot of movement in the A.L. as the division "leaders" are still the '79 Blue Jays, '82 Twins, and '79 A's with the '03 Tigers holding down the Loser Card spot. Only in the Loser League could Emil Brown lead the league in RBI.

In the N.L. the only change was the '98 Marlins finally wrestled away the bottom of the N.L. East away from the '88 Braves although still both are very much on their way to postseason. The '81 Padres are only five games under .500 yet have now built a six and a half game "lead" in the West over the '93 Rockies but if you are under .500 in this league you really do suck.

The boxscore of the month for July again features the '82 Twins getting lit up and it was appropriately on the 4th of July this time in a 16-3 drubbing at the hands of the '91 Indians. Starting pitcher John Pacella's line: 5 2/3 IP, 13 H, 13 R, 13 ER, 7 BB, 3 SO. On top of that he was left out there for 142 pitches! He must have fucked Twins manager Billy Gardner's wife or something to be made to suffer like that. Albert Belle hit three home runs for the Tribe.

This is something I've wanted to do for a while and have tried a couple of similar lists before but ended abandoning them. I once had an almost completed list for the top 100 players since 1986, which I consider my sports lifetime, but I ran into problems when it came to evaluating players who may have had their peak occur after 1986 but had played several years before 1986. I also felt the list I had compiled was overly subjective and I just simply was not satisfied by my results.

Now of course trying to assemble a list of the top 100 players since 1979 was going to have the same problems. My intention was to only take into account what players have done since 1979 and nothing before. Tom Seaver for example is one of the greatest pitchers of all time but the majority of his career occurred before I was born so it wouldn't make sense to include him on this list. So I decided I would have to have a cut off year which would admittedly eliminate some players who if you considered on their career from 1979 on would warrant placement on this list. But I also want to be able to consider a player's whole career and not just a portion of it.

The cut off I decided on was I would only consider players who's official rookie year was no later than 1978 as I was born on the final scheduled day of the 1978 season (the day before the Bucky F'n Dent game). Now I emphasize their official rookie season as to include players who had cups of coffee in the Majors prior to '78. Now this obviously eliminates some great players who I did grow up watching as a kid but I had to put a cut off year in to real make this manageable. Because of this some of the players you will not see on this list are:

And that's just the Hall of Famers as there's also Andre Dawson, Dave Parker, Dale Murphy, Keith Hernandez, Dwight Evans, and Willie Randolph. I didn't put in a cut off debut year for active players but it ended up being 2001 by default because of 9/11....okay not really, it just kind of worked out that way. If I was just focusing on peak certainly someone like Chase Utley could appear on the list but since career is being considered Utley just wouldn't really fit on this list. That's important to keep in mind when it comes to active players and where they end up on the list. Albert Pujols on peak alone is one of the five best players of my lifetime without a doubt but we don't know if he'll have a serious decline at some point thus he won't be in the Top 5 on this list.

For the statistics I used, I went with Win Shares and Wins Above Replacement (WARP3). I went with them because both are good for career/peak evaluations and both take defense into account, although both have huge flaws when it comes to how they measure defense. To assemble a list of players to put under consideration I used career Win Shares with cut offs of 200 Win Shares for position players, 180 for starting pitchers, and 150 for relievers. I ended up with around 160 players to consider and I ranked them by the players primary position first, grouping designated hitters with first basemen and grouping left and right fielders together, before doing the main list. I will say I wouldn't completely rule that I accidentally left a deserving player off the consideration list who would have made the top 100, in fact I'd say the odds are pretty good.

As mentioned I mentioned part of the problem of prior lists I've tried to do is I felt they were too subjective. This time around though I decided that is almost impossible to not have subjectivity in a list like this. I could have put in several months of research to make this list completely objective but I'm not Bored enough to do that. In fact this list is probably too subjective when it comes down to it as for example I'm not a fan of career closers so don't be shocked but the dearth of closers on this list. I also say that my placement of pitchers in the list is a bit haphazard. I finished the list a few days ago and already thought about making changes but I said "fuck it" I'll just go with what I came up with originally, even if the final list sucks ass. In fact don't even bother looking at it.

Top 100 MLB Players from 1979 - 2008 (#100 - #81)

Disclaimer: If you didn't read anything above, cut off was 1978 rookies.